Filed under Animation …

Oct 10 2011
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3D, Animation, Maya, Walk Cycles

3d Is Different

Since I’m out of work at the moment I thought I’d take some time and see if I can get into the swing of 3d animation in Maya.  I’ve dome some 3d before but only as part of a class at UCLA.  I suppose the class was informative and helpful but in no way did it get me where I need to go.  I ended up spending most of my time in the class making amateurish models with amateurish rigs, leaving very little time for actual animation, which is where my interest really lay.  I ended up kind of half-assing the final film, not having enough time to really get it done right.  The only motion I ended up finishing was supposed to be of a fat sheep reaching in vain for some grass, but it ended up looking more like it was barfing.

I come to it now knowing what I really want to do, though, and what I think I’ll enjoy and be kinda good at.  I’m a character animator.  What I want to do is animate characters – not model them, not rig them, not paint them.  Let the other people do those things – people who enjoy and are good at them.

Brief Aside

When I was working on Don’t Fear the Sitter I dreaded doing the backgrounds.  A lot of animators I know looked forward to that part, since it was so much less work for them.  And while, yes, overall the BGs took less time for me than the animation did, and I don’t think I did a bad job on them, they were a real chore.

End of Aside

So I downloaded the student version of Maya.  (The people at Autodesk totally have the right idea in making it free for students and the unemployed – training up their future customers.) I bought a Maya book.  I downloaded a character rig (thank god there are people out there who make these things and release them for free).  I dove in.

I figured the most basic thing to try out at first would be a good old walk cycle.  I tried to put in some Richard Williams style flourish, breaking elbows and escaping from that two-dimensional plane in which the traditional side-view walk cycle resides.  Here are the results:

Oct 05 2011
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Animation

Have You Seen My Sister Evelyn?

I recently did some work on a music video and it just went live a couple days ago.  I think it’s a really good video and I’m happy to have worked on it.  Here it is:

Oct 02 2011
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Animation, Falling Lizard

The First Falling lizard

As I’ve said elsewhere, almost every year I participate in Falling Lizard, the annual let’s-make-a-film-in-a-weekend party at the UCLA animation workshop.  The first year I participated was a year and a half before I actually started in the program.  My theory was that if I showed my face and enthusiasm enough then they’d have to accept me into the program.  I guess it worked, since I was accepted on my first try in 2003 :)

The first Falling Lizard I attended had the theme “creation myths”. I put together a happy little film about what the first day might have been like. From concept to completion I created this piece in about 52 hours, completely analog and old-school. Presented here is a modest update, remastered in Flash and converted to widescreen. Enjoy!

Sep 28 2011
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I Must Destroy You, UCLA

I Must Destroy You

Students in their first year at the UCLA Animation Workshop create a short film. When I was there the only thing we were allowed to use a computer for was to master the sound. I followed that rule. Pretty much.

The rule was there because at some point in the 1990s, as computers became more more helpful in amateur filmmaking, some of the students in the workshop took advantage of those digital tools a little too much.  It got to the point where some of them were just phoning in their work, turning in films that were, at best, of questionable merit. So the professors of the workshop decided that it would be appropriate to require all first-years to work completely traditionally, with no help from a computer.  That would keep them from using the too-easy shortcuts that computers provided.

Not exactly the solution I would have arrived at, but that’s a debate for another time and place.  Really it’s a moot point now, since the rule has all but disappeared.  Thankfully, first-year students are now allowed to use computers, now simply held accountable for the quality of their films.

Anyway, this is all to preface the presentation of my first-year film.  This is it, animated the old-fashioned way, on cels with brushed lines and painted fills. I added digital energy sword effects after finishing it for school, but other than that it’s full-on old-school.  I hope you enjoy it.

Sep 24 2011
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Animation, Cats In Space, Falling Lizard

I Can’t Do Anything Half-Assed

I’m only speaking slightly hyperbolically when I say that I can’t do anything half-assed. I always feel that if I’m going to do something that’ll be a lot of work, I might as well do it right. Take, for example, animation.

It can be frustrating to have that attitude sometimes. It means I do a lot less stuff.  It would be great to be able to just jump in and start animating something, but I think I’d end up with a bad result if I did that.  Why make it if it ends up being so bad that no one will want to watch it?

In the case of animation, story is vitally important.  That’s the real stopping point.  I have to sit down and make a good story to animate, otherwise it’s not worth creating the animation.

I’m thinking about this in relation to my Cats in Space series idea.  I made a very short animation based on that recently.  If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look:

I did that video in a super-rough style for the sake of getting it done fast.  I got an interesting comment on the Youtube page for that video, suggesting that if I did an episode like that once every two months and gave it some higher production value then I might actually be able to get some people following my Youtube channel.  That’s a pretty exciting thought to me.  I love the idea of people who I don’t know actually being interested in the stuff I make.

How hard would it be to do something like that?  Well, that’s where we get back to the basic premise of this post.  If I were to do a series then I’d want it to have a good overarching story.  Serialization, that is.  I should be able to string it together and have it be coherent as a whole presentation.  You know, because it should be something that new viewers can go back and watch sequentially and get the whole story.

To have a good story there has to be some planning.  You can’t just jump in because that’ll create a mess of a story.  You get more short-term gratification but in the long term you get a bit of a shoddy product.

For the last few days I’ve been messing around in Word, working on story ideas.  It’s hard.  There are good specific steps you can take to make a good story but you still have to have some creativity.  Maybe that’s obvious, but it’s something I need to remind myself of.  I need to come up with something good to make it engaging.

So yeah, that’s what I’m working on.  I’m excited to make it happen.  I guess we’ll see where it goes from here.

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